Michel Bauwens at Lift Austria | Enable

I am in Vienna attending a Lift@home event organized by a local team of entrepreneurs and academics. Second talk of the day is Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives founder Michel Bauwens. John Thakara pointed in advance to this talk, he was right. Michel put some words on things “you don’t need a PHD to notice” but that, brought together in such a comprehensive way, connect into something powerful: a name for this movement most early adopters are feeling without being able to explain it further.

2 fundamentally wrong assumptions in our society:

- We think earth resources are infinite. But an infinite thinking within a finite system is wrong.
- We think we have to make cooperation difficult to make collaboration happen.

There is now a conscience that these assumptions need to change, and collaboration and openness are a key answer. Steps to make this happen:

1. identifying key aspects of openess (participation, transparency, “shareability”, access)

2. finding enablers of openness (a common language, assets, etc): definitions, code, licences, standards

3. infrastructures of openness: open meeting spaces, open territories (Regiowiki), open hardware (Arduino), open objects (eCars – Now), etc.

4. Practices of openness: open software (Linux), open designs (Honeybee Network), open knowledge

5. Domains of openness: education, science, business, government, spirituality (interesting to imaginea user generated religion…)

6. Products of openness: Open course ware, open books, open journals

7. Open movements: OpenMaterials, OpenCoalition

8. Open consciousness…

You can see Michel’s talk as a mind map here.